Writing At The Kitchen Table: Elizabeth David

The Authorized Biography

Returning to England after the Second World War and exasperated by the bleakness of English food, Elizabeth David put pen to paper and began to work out 'an agonized craving for the sun.' The result was Mediterranean Food, a book which caught the imagination of a generation. In the course of the next decade, the happiest of her life, her books and articles inspired a cookery revolution.

Working from an extensive archive of personal papers, Artemis Cooper reveals the powerful tensions between Elizabeth David's private world and the image of the successful woman she presented to her public. It is a story that even some of her closest friends never knew.
"I think that the ideal cookery writer... should leave something, not too much perhaps, but a little unsaid; people must make their own discoveries, use their own intelligence, otherwise they will be deprived of part of the fun."
Elizabeth David